"Computer science drives innovation in the U.S. economy and society. Despite growing demand for jobs in the field, it remains marginalized throughout the U.S. K-12 education system."

There are many reasons for this. As you well know, teachers are already stretched pretty thin, and often it seems like there's just no bandwidth to add something new to a very full schedule. Additionally, some schools have few or no computers and/or tablets for classroom use.

But the earlier we introduce children to coding, the more comfortable they will be when presented with more in-depth learning opportunities in middle and high school. Also, early exposure to coding helps teach children how important it is to understand computers as the valuable tools they are rather than merely fun playthings."

Code Studio is a newly released platform geared towards helping students from kindergarten to high school learn the different coding concepts. Code Studio which is a product of the popular nonprofit group Code.org known for its relentless efforts to make coding part of the curricula.

"We started Made with Code because even though increasingly more aspects in our lives are powered by technology, women aren’t represented in the companies, labs, research, creative arts, design, organizations, and boardrooms that make technology happen.

If girls are inspired to see that Computer Science can make the world more beautiful, more usable, more safe, more kind, more innovative, more healthy, and more funny, then hopefully they will begin to contribute their essential voices. As parents, teachers, organizations, and companies we’re making it our mission to creatively engage girls with code.

"Most students need all the help they can get when it comes to planning big projects. Here’s a list of apps that can help them stay organized when they’re working on group presentations, research papers or other big tasks that might take a little extra energy to keep everything together."

This list of apps is created by an American organisation, TCEA. The apps may not be available in Australia. They cover the primary and secondary sectors. The list is extensive and is updated regularly.

"The best way for students to avoid any copyright issues when creating slideshows or other multimedia presentations is to use images they’ve taken themselves. Another good option is pull images from a classroom gallery that everyone has contributed to for the purpose of sharing and re-using with classmates. You and your students could build such a gallery in a shared Google Drive folder, a shared Dropbox folder, or a shared Flickr pool. You and your students can share pictures directly from your mobile phones to these folders through the respective iOS and Android apps available for each service."

"Creatorverse is an awesome new and FREE app available for your IOS or Android device. You can make your creations come to life with this app- the objects you add and create have physical properties that you can set in motion. The objects you design can bounce, roll, accelerate, and more. Users can build simple machines and games and designs can be shared so you can play with other users' creations too. Watch the video to see the app in action:"

I Scooped this from "iTeach with Technology" blog. Karen Ogen is the author there, but she got it from David Kapuler's blog, "Technology Tidbits." CreatorVerse looks like a niche which hadn't been filled. Physics and Art! Linden Labs develops games, but has stepped out with more collaborative "gaming."

Now that teachers have easy access to tools like Garage Band and iPods that make recording a breeze, podcasting is quickly becoming the latest creative mode of learning and presenting in schools. Here are ten ideas to try in your classroom today.

I like some of these ideas. I'm thinking we could have students make podcast booktalks and have QR codes linking to them in the books or on a display or around the school. Hmm...kids can't use their phones at school, yet. Well, I can always put links to them in our catalog and on the website.

Earlier today I published a post on FreeTech4Teachers.com in which I mentioned using Magisto to create videos online. This afternoon I tested out the Magisto iPad app.

The Magisto iPad app works in a manner that is very similar to the web app. To create a movie with the Magisto iPad app you simply select videos and images that are on your iPad’s camera roll, select some music (Magisto has a large selection of royalty-free music) to serve as your video’s soundtrack, and choose a theme for your movie. Magisto is currently offering a Halloween theme that you can apply to your movie. Magisto handles all of the mixing of your media to generate a movie for you. See the app in action in the video embedded below.

With the thousands of educational apps vying for the attention of busy teachers, it can be hard to sift for the gold. Michelle Luhtala, a savvy librarian from New Canaan High School in Connecticut has crowd-sourced the best, most extensive list of appsvoted on by educators around the country.

“I wanted to make sure we had some flexibility because there’s no one app that’s better than all the others,” Luhtala said. Some apps are best for younger students, others are more complicated, better suited for high school students. Many apps do one thing really well, but aren’t great at everything. Still others are bought, redesigned or just disappear — so it’s always good to know about an array of tools to suit the need at hand.

"Proponents of the sociolinguistic perspective to the study of literacy ( e.g.Paul Gee, Collin Lanksheare, Michelle Knobel, Brian Street, to mention but a few ) view the developments of literacy and with it education as a direct result to the sophistication of the social and cultural aspect of human life. Some of them like Collin and Michelle associate the evolution of education to that of the web and hence the nomenclature education 1.0 (related web 1.0), education 2.0 ( related to web 2.0), and education (3.0 related to web 3.0). This association, however is not haphazard for there are many commonalities between each pair."

Too often the iPad is written off as purely a device for a consuming content created by someone else. Here are some easy ways that even the youngest children can create their own content using an iPad (I particularly love the iPad Spy idea!).

"December 9-15, 2013 is Computer Science Education Week, and this year their big push is to get coding incorporated into school curriculums everywhere. There are lots of reasons why kids should be coding, but none more than the fact that there are more resources than ever to help students and teachers get started, regardless of their previous experiences with computer programming. So, in honor of the #HourOfCode project, here is my BIG list of iPad coding apps for kids. There is something here for students of all ages."

Some excellent coding apps here. I have been looking into coding apps for the Tech X Perts as I believe it is a critical skill for young people - it involves both logic and creativity and can really take them places.

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"Creating books on the iPad doesn’t seem like the first thing you might do with one of the popular little tablets, but it’s really quite capable of doing so provided you’re not trying to write the next great novel."

"Education apps are helpful for teachers because they refract content through engaging, colorful, and gamified approaches to content interaction.

They are also mobile, can offer data, and can be played at school or home, making them useful in a K-12 blended learning or flipped classroom setting.

With this kind of flexible utility in mind, it’s no wonder they’re in such high demand–so here are 44 education apps for K-6 students doing the best kind of learning math teachers hate and English-Language Arts teachers love: open-ended learning."

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